jhizzy

I don't understand why so many people still use a pc to access e-gold. There is so much spyware for windows that its getting a little rediculous. How many people here use a Mac? I know I can't be the only smart one in the entire forum. BTW: I learned from experience, I used a pc until my e-gold was stolen, after that I purchased a Mac and never looked back.

*Note: the last option for the poll it should say OFF not OF....typo

jorhyne

Windows all the way. It is not hard to keep your PC clean, just be dilligent in having good spyware and trojan detectors.

Doommister

i never had any problem with PC
and don't feel urgency to use MACs. so any will do.

Trinary

If anyone wants a more secure PC, they could use alternative OS like Linux/BSD variant anyway, and some of them such as ubuntu are really newbie friendly.

kyteflyer

I used a PC until November 2002. I still kept my PC because I was pretty sure I would spend more time on it, and that the Mac would be a passing phase. After I had not even switched it on for 6 months I finally realised that Mac was my real choice, and I sold the PC.

I never had a virus or trojan whilst using a PC... not in 10 years. And I never had a virus on my older computers (varieties of Amiga, Mac, C64 etc). But in the 10 years I had a PC, especially toward the end, I found I was spending more time stitching the machine up against the baddies, and keeping abreast of the latest info, so I wouldnt be compromised, than actually just enjoying using it. That was when I decided to take another look at Mac.

As always, its horses for courses. I use a Windows machine at work, and I am going to have to get another at home so that I can get the software and hardware I want to read the output from the smartcard in my AutoPAP machine.. so be it. But that machine will never be on the net.

I love the Mac. There's nothing I can do on the PC that I can't do on the Mac, apart from the specialised software I mentioned, plus a couple of others, but for the Net, for general productivity... I can do it all. The industry standard software is on my machine (Adobe, Microsoft and Macromedia products) and I can move files between home and work on the flashdrive as easy as pie, with no fuss.

If you are a really avid gamer, you'll want a PC (or an Xbox or whatever)... many of the standard games have been ported to Mac, but I'm told they play better on PC... but if you aren't a gamer, theres no reason NOT to switch, IMO.

OSX is built on the BSD subsytem and its as secure as all get out. Even without my firewall activated, I show as "stealth" on most of the standard firewall testers out there.

You can't beat it. You may not want it, but you can't beat it.

kyteflyer

I think a lot of people have difficulty coming to terms with a different OS.

I've suggested this to friends who wanted to keep their hardware but when it came down to it, they were lost without their Start button, and even tho it can be emulated under various flavours of linux (as well as OS/2, BeOS etc) they still want that Windows thing. Beats me. None of my friends do more than access the net, download the odd MP3, and play with their camera and photographs, all of which can be easily done (and sometimes more easily) with other OSes... but still... they dont look like Windows so apparently they are no good. These are the same friends who refuse to recognise that its necessary to keep virus definitions updated, and to install antispyware stuff etc...

I think my mac decision was to protect me, from them!

jhizzy

Are there any viruses or trojans that exist for Linux or BSD? If there aren't any, than I would have to agree with you.

jhizzy

The only downside with Macs is that they are more expensive than pcs. I guess you get what you pay for.

kyteflyer

Yes, and no.

Buying a Mac means you are also buying the hardware that was built for the software (or vice versa, really). You also get a slew of really top line programs which are not standard on a Windows machine. You pay a LOT extra to get a comparable software set to iLife, for example (and even then, its not comparable... but thats my opinion).

When I bought my 12" iBook (I have an iBook and an eMac) I looked at windows laptops with a comparable form factor and specs, and found that I would have to pay well over $3,000 for pretty much the same thing (but without the decent software). I paid $1599 for the iBook at that time. (These are AUD, so don't freak out)

Remember when you do the comparison, to compare Apples with... apples. so to speak. A cheap noname brand is not comparable to Apple... so you might want to look at the top brands instead... Toshiba and Sony for example, rather than Highlander and so on which we all know are dead cheap. And don't compare with the machine that joe bloggs builds in his loungeroom for you either. Sure its cheaper... but better? nope.

However, all that said... you can still get a Mac for under $1000 (I'm looking at AU prices again) and use your existing monitor, USB keyboard etc... so the purchase doesnt have to be expensive... or intrusive.